


what you had to do

by apologeticallybourgeois



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: (more feelings than Andrew ever wanted tbh), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Biting, Blushing, Consent Negotiation, Intersex Omegas, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Painplay, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-23 00:05:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17672630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apologeticallybourgeois/pseuds/apologeticallybourgeois
Summary: Steven’s face did a series of complicated maneuvers before settling on vaguely put-out. “It’s weird that you know exactly when your heat is coming. To the day.”“I’m lucky that way,” Andrew said, shrugging off the question.





	what you had to do

**Author's Note:**

> The title was inspired by 'The Journey' by the late Mary Oliver, who absolutely does not deserve what I did with her poem, but I am an old woman who has needs. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> This story is set sometime immediately after season 5 of Worth It. FYI: I try not to Insta-stalk the subjects of my RPF fics (listen, I was sent to Catholic school from ages seven to 17), so my stories are largely only informed by what I remember from Buzzfeed videos. 
> 
> A probably necessary disclosure: this fic is much less funny ha-ha than my Unsolved fic.
> 
> I choose not to put warnings on my fics, but feel free to ask in the comments about specific potentially triggering content that I may not have tagged.

“So—”

Andrew thumbed the send button. From the corner of his eye, Steven’s blond head slowly overtook his line of vision. He braced himself.

“—we’re still on for this weekend, right?”

“It’s on my Google Calendar, Steven.” Andrew drew in a deep breath for a sigh and instantly regretted it; Steven smelled of warm shredded coconut overlaid with something green and not quite floral, mouth-watering. “I sent you an invite last week. Do you want to see the receipt for my contraceptive shot?”

“Uh, I wasn’t sure, I mean, it’s perfectly okay to withdraw consent any time and all that. Not that you need my permission.” Steven clamped his mouth shut and peered at Andrew with awkward, desperate apology, an expression perfectly calculated to be the dictionary illustration of _hangdog_.

Andrew lowered his phone. So much for a quiet outdoor lunch. “Having second thoughts?”

“No! Just checking in.” 

“Then consider me checked in. I offered, you accepted, and neither of us is changing his mind.” The one saving grace out of this entire conversation, Andrew thought, was that their nearest colleagues were well out of earshot: Annie methodically working her way through a falafel roll while nodding at what were probably cat photos on Niki’s phone.

Steven’s face did a series of complicated maneuvers before settling on vaguely put-out. “It’s weird that you know exactly when your heat is coming. To the day.”

“I’m lucky that way,” Andrew said, shrugging off the question. He would much rather be cooing at photos of Riceball, who at least was fucking adorable instead of just being a biological fact.

Blowing out a breath, Steven started to extricate himself from the bench. Over at the other side of the lot, Annie and Niki were laughing, looking untroubled and merry and not at all trapped in a conversation they would chew someone’s leg off to escape. “Yeah, okay, you’re fine, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“No, stay there, your head’s keeping the sun off my screen.”

Steven rolled his eyes. “Jerk.”

***

 _Worth It_ changed Andrew’s life, more than he would have ever expected when Steven approached him to stand in for Keith. In more ways than one, and sometimes in ways he hoped none of its fans ever learned: around season three and one too many memos, he’d briefly considered taking heat suppressants alongside birth control.

Andrew’s appeared in about a million of Buzzfeed videos about omegas. He knew more than he cared to remember about what people think about omegas, even without reading the comments. He’d long come to terms with the tightrope he walks between the image he wants to project and the desires driven by both biology and socialisation, mostly by limiting emotional investment in the opinions of randoms on the internet. 

Because the universe loved having a laugh, it turned out he did care more than he wanted, at least when his job was on the line. Buzzfeed’s views were declining, the management was investing a lot of resources into an unexpected hit, and Andrew was — despite himself — uncomplicatedly happy to be led around by Steven trying delicious foods and making puns while being filmed by Adam. It stung to be reading comments speculating if and when he was going into heat, and if that was why they weren’t churning out more episodes.

In the end, he decided not to take the suppressants, downloaded a heat tracking app, and synced it with his calendar. Fuck the comments. He’s always been lucky, after all: his heat came and went on the dot, with little fuss. He’d become used to thinking of it as a condition to be managed, like combing his hair to make the part more flattering.

It figured, Alanis-Morisette-ironic-figured, that Steven would up-end everything.

***

Steven showed up on Friday evening in a soft grey sweatshirt and dark jeans, both of which ended up carefully folded over the back of the sole chair in Andrew’s bedroom. In-between their last conversation and Steven kicking off his shoes at Andrew’s door, Steven seemed to have re-discovered his usual blithe confidence; he brought a beautiful bunch of red roses, and placed them in a jar of water on the bedside table.

Andrew could’ve let it go, but he didn’t particularly want to. This— this thing between them wasn’t anything like what the flowers and their rich, wine-red petals implied.

“Look, I’m going to do this right,” Steven said. He’d taken his sweatshirt off by then, providing Andrew with considerable distraction.

“We’re not dating,” Andrew said, too sharp and too quickly to pull the words back.

Steven flinched, but didn’t back down. His pants went over the chair with a slap. “It doesn’t matter to you either way, but it matters to _me_.”

Andrew calculated the likelihood of their argument going anywhere productive and gave in. “Fine, but if we knock them off the table, you’re cleaning the glass. The first aid kit’s in the bathroom.”

“Wow, that was suspiciously quick, Dark Lord Andrew.” Steven bounced — _bounced_ , like a child — onto the bed, rolling to his side. “And don’t you worry, your feet are safe from the bad, bad glass.”

“It’s the least I could do. I should be giving _you_ flowers, under our current circumstances.” Andrew slid further into his nest of blankets, spitefully leaving none for Steven. “White roses. Lilies, maybe.”

Steven threw a pillow at his head, yelping when Andrew batted it back. “Quit the virginity jokes, asshole. Way to make me feel like I should’ve googled for a manual.”

In the dim light he’d insisted on, Steven’s body was a pale, slender silhouette interrupted by the cotton boxers he hadn’t gotten the nerve to remove just yet. It should’ve been easy to forget, if they held their breath, that Steven was an alpha. It wasn’t. Steven, in some ways, hewed close to stereotypes: born to a family that celebrated an alpha son, raised to aspire to a virtuous, dutiful ideal of an alpha, and as thoughtless about his status as Andrew was carefully aware of his. 

Andrew wanted to strip Steven down, ruffle his cheerful certainty, send him back to New York with marks on his skin and soul. Maybe that was what drove Andrew’s impulsive, “Want to see a practical demonstration?”

“Sure—” Steven’s eyes widened as the words caught up with his mouth. “—wait, what?”

“Settle in and make yourself comfortable, Steven.” Andrew threw off the blankets and, bracing a heel against the mattress for balance, twisted to his left. Not quite face-to-face with Steven, but close enough to see the blush spreading down his neck to his chest. Steven’s mouth was open, instinctively scenting the air.

Andrew pulled up one of his knees, widening the part of his legs. He grasped his soft cock in his right hand, playing with it a little before giving it a firm, dry stroke. He wasn’t wet yet, but that would change soon enough, especially with Steven pumping out alpha pheromones like he was about to scent-mark every inch of Andrew’s bedroom.

He turned his face to his pillow, mouthing the familiar cotton as he slid his other hand up to his nipples, pinching the fleshy nubs until he gasped with pain. He’d always loved a bit of nipple torture, and — under the right circumstances — erotic humiliation to go with it. They were never, ever to get to it though, because this was a one-time thing, and Andrew was never going to teach Steven how to make him beg.

When he finally left them alone, his nipples were sore and tingling, and Steven was watching him like a dog waiting to be taken off his leash. Andrew sucked his fingers, deliberately loud and obscene, then reached down to the slit at the apex between his legs, where an alpha’s testicles would be. Steven’s scent thickened. Andrew felt himself getting slick, enough that his fingers barely burned when he breached himself.

“You know, to be honest,” Andrew said, idly sliding his fingers in and out, “I thought about your mouth a lot. If it would be _worth it_ to get a virgin to eat me out — I didn’t think you’d be great at it, but you’d want to be, wouldn’t you? Do you want to be a good alpha for me, Steven?”

He heard Steven swallow. 

“Okay, one: I cannot believe you just— I can’t believe you made a pun right now, right here.” 

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “It’s not a pun, it’s wordplay. Keep up.”

“Oh my god, shut up.” Steven’s hands were twitching, and he held them to his body as if he didn’t quite know where to place them. “Two: um, I could, I would, if you wanna show me?”

“Then lose the boxers and put your mouth between my legs.” 

Andrew had barely wriggled onto his back when Steven was on him, their nude bodies pressing together like the pages of a book. Steven was warm and smelled so good that Andrew didn’t bother dodging the fervent kisses he laid on Andrew’s chin, his collarbones, the ticklish spot just above his navel; until Steven pulled back to stare at Andrew’s cunt.

Andrew slid his fingers out and used his wet hand to cup his cock out of the way. “Use your thumbs to open me up. Then lick. Keep licking until I tell you to stop.”

“Okay.” Steven gulped. His hands were damp, and too gentle. “Tell me what to do.”

***

Andrew thought he might have to coax Steven into this, but for all of Steven’s awkward clumsiness there was no hesitation in the way he mouthed at Andrew’s cunt, licking up slick. Andrew gripped Steven’s hair, muscles locking up as Steven pushed his tongue into the slit, then sighed and relaxed into Steven’s movements. Emboldened, Steven pressed his mouth against where his tongue was deep in Andrew, and sucked.

Andrew let himself drift on the sensation, freeing Steven’s hair to tug at his nipples again, and moaned at the bite of pain. Steven wasn’t skilled enough to make him come like this, even in heat, but it was still good. So good he could’ve drifted for hours on Steven trying to please him with his mouth, drenched in saliva and his juices.

He could feel the warmth of Steven’s face against his thighs, flushed with blood, and the faint prickle of bristles on Steven’s chin. His toes curled against the sheets bunched up at the bottom of the bed. Every noise in the room was amplified, from the slick rub of Steven’s tongue to the vibrations of his phone, tucked away in a drawer. Desire unfurled from the base of his spine, and his body throbbed with it, wet and wanting.

“Enough,” he gasped, batting at Steven’s head.

Steven reared back immediately, eyes wild and dark. He licked his mouth — a compulsive, unconscious gesture that still made something hot squirm in Andrew’s stomach — and his chest heaved as he fought to bring his breathing under control. Andrew’s eyes slid down the tracks of sweat on Steven’s body, and took his first good look at Steven’s cock.

“I don’t know why you were so worried, you’re clearly a grower,” Andrew said, after a considered pause. “I am this close to pinning you down and using you like a living dildo. And I don’t know why I said that.”

Steven blushed even harder, and immediately reinforced its virginal quality by saying, “It means you’re in heat? We can have sex now?”

“Foreplay _is_ sex, but never mind, I’m not wasting my time arguing about this.” Andrew wanted to sink his teeth into the skin where Steven’s blush spread over his throat and stay there while Steven fucked him. It was getting harder to be articulate. “Did you—”

“I read your notes at least seventy times.” Steven’s eyes softened, the line of his mouth turning tender. “I got this. Can I kiss you?”

Fever-hot prickles broke out on Andrew’s skin. “Go for it.”

Kissing was clearly something Steven had a lot of experience with; he maneuvered Andrew to his side, so they would be pressed together in a long, unbroken line, but kept his weight off Andrew. Steven kissed like an ardent lover about to leave for war, his arms winding tight around Andrew as if he could tuck Andrew inside his ribcage for the long absence ahead.

Andrew breathed out and let the thought go, let himself kiss back. He hitched a thigh over Steven’s legs and gently gripped Steven’s cock with one hand, feeling out the swell at the base. Steven’s body surged against him, shocked into action, and Steven made a low, hungry sound.

“Do you still want it like this?” Steven said, and brushed a kiss against his jaw.

“Yeah. But you can ask for things too — that’s how it works.” Andrew wanted to say this while he was still lucid, not well into his heat when Steven couldn’t entirely trust everything that came out of his mouth. “There are two people in this bed, and what we decided on isn’t a service agreement.”

Steven’s brows scrunched together. “I… don’t even have anything to go off from. Except Pastor Kim’s lectures and porn, and I don’t like porn.”

“Fair enough. When you think of something—”

“—I’ll ask you. I promise.”

***

The first time was clearest in Andrew’s recollection: Steven fucking into him with clumsy, shallow thrusts, groaning into his hair. They were still lying on their sides, Andrew’s legs clamped around Steven’s waist. They didn’t have much leverage in this position, and it was exactly how Andrew liked it at the first stage of his heat; the best kind of tease. A taste of how out of control he would feel in time, when he had to put himself in a partner’s care.

“This is impossible,” Steven panted into Andrew’s neck, later, when he’d turned Andrew onto his back and fucked him like that, pinning Andrew’s shoulders to the bed. He looked wrecked and uncertain in turns, disbelief chasing the edges of his pleasure. “I can’t, I can’t—”

“Told you, knotting’s not needed.” The words felt like gravel in Andrew’s mouth. He wasn’t even sure if he was making sense, and it was almost a lie, now: he would have gotten on his knees and sucked his slick from Steven’s cock if changing the terms of his surrender was on the table, for Steven’s knot in his cunt.

“I know.” Steven’s face was a mask of tormented bliss, sweat dripping down onto the mess of fluids on Andrew’s chest. “Just not sure if I can keep up with you.”

Andrew’s teeth clacked together, cutting off a snarl. There was an animal in Andrew, a primal omega that wanted to tear into Steven’s throat, enraged and hurt at being denied a worthy mate. But he was a goddamn adult person with all the accoutrements of civilisation in the 21st century. He wasn’t going to lash out at someone he knew was trying his best to make it good for him, and Steven wasn’t the only one who said yes to this, with full knowledge of what could and might happen. 

Steven came with a choked cry, the intense euphoria on his face swiftly wiped off with disappointment. He pulled out slowly, trembling. Andrew could read the defeat in the tense lines of Steven’s shoulders, the downturned corners of his mouth, and firmly crushed the first, cruel quip on his own tongue under a metaphorical heel.

“I didn’t tell you everything,” Andrew said into the unsettled silence, tugging Steven down to him, cradling him in his arms. His own satisfaction could wait a while longer; he knew Steven would come good on it.

“Seriously?” Steven said, muffled by Andrew’s skin. “Your email was four and a half pages long. What else is there?”

Andrew nudged his head up. “The part where I like it when my partners use their teeth on me. Now fuck me with your fingers, and I’ll show you.”

The initial slow, hesitant slide of Steven’s fingers into him was agony; and then it wasn’t, his cunt stretching around their relentless thrusts as Steven abruptly discovered that yes, this was something he was into. Andrew talked him through it, or tried to — he sounded incoherent even to himself. He rolled his hips, meeting Steven’s thrusts, and jerked his cock with a rough, unsteady grip.

When he finally found release it was to Steven’s hand in his cunt, and Steven’s sharp teeth, bruising the soft swell of his breast.

***

Andrew woke up on Saturday morning to the smell of coffee and eggs cooked in butter, and Steven trying to tip-toe his way back. Steven sat at the edge of the bed, dressed in his boxers, a tray precariously balanced on his lap. In it was the promised coffee, and a plate with toast and scrambled eggs. There was a small bowl of blueberries and cubes of cantaloupe that had to have come from Steven, because Andrew didn’t remember any fruit in his fridge except for a random assortment of bananas in various stages of edibility.

“I thought of something I want to do,” Steven said, too steadily for the words to be anything but rehearsed, repeatedly and recently. 

Andrew pushed himself upright. He could feel his heat simmering under his skin, but he was sated, for now. “Yes?” he said, warily. “If you want to try anal with either of us on the receiving end, I’m up for it but you’re going to have to do research first.”

“ _What_? No!” A blush crept its way down Steven’s throat. “I want to feed you, if you’re okay with that. With my hand, I mean. Would you like to, please?”

In hindsight, Andrew should have expected this. Steven would have hand-fed him on every episode of _Worth It_ if he could, but settled for clinking bites of food. Alphas were like this sometimes, driven by instinct and socialisation to provide. Steven offered to feed everyone who would let him: Adam, Annie, assorted (and bemused) Tasty Japan crewmembers. Andrew almost said no — he didn’t want their work to be touched by this, and it be witnessed by millions of people on the internet.

But Steven was radiant with earnest want, and Andrew liked how it looked on him, and how it hadn’t even occurred to Steven to do anything about it except to ask honestly. If he said no, Steven would tell him that he’d been looking forward to it but that was okay, and then give him the entire tray. If he said yes, well—

Andrew hesitated. He should make a decision soon; the eggs were getting cold. “Sure,” he said.

Steven’s face lit up. He carefully set the tray to the side, on the bed, and spread a napkin over Andrew’s lap. Andrew rubbed the fabric between his fingers; it was from a set of damask linen napkins he’d bought on a whim years ago, and travelled with him from place to place to be relegated to the back kitchen drawers. The woman who sold them to him at a garage sale was an alpha, and she hadn’t made a single crack about keeping his alpha keen or asked him when the wedding was. He liked the pattern of cavorting lions.

First to be served was the toast, buttered and cut into squares. The eggs had a deep orange-gold hue — Steven hadn’t skimped on minor luxuries. He fed Andrew alternating bites of toast and eggs on a fork, the tips of his fingers brushing against Andrew with every pass. He didn’t take his eyes off Andrew, watching every chew and swallow with palpable satisfaction.

Next were sips of coffee, the cup lifted to Andrew’s lips with a steadfast hand. Steven timed it to Andrew’s swallows, waiting exactly the same amount of time between each sip. Andrew wasn’t quite sure whether the feeding was a sex thing as well as an alpha thing until they got to the fruit, and he watched Steven’s pupils dilate as he ate from Steven’s hand and licked fruit juice off the skin. He was acutely aware of the sudden wetness between his legs, his tender nipples tightening to hard points, and the hush in the room waiting to be broken. 

Steven licked his lips. He placed the tray on the floor with care, pushing it under the bed, then leaned towards Andrew — slowly, waiting for a yes. Andrew tucked his legs under him, canting forward to meet Steven. He had a jolt of memory from the previous night, of being on his knees with his arms braced against the headboard and Steven pounding into him from behind, as unrelenting as a metronome.

They kissed. Andrew slid his hands into the waistband of Steven’s boxers, tugging them down Steven’s hips. Steven stopped the kiss to wriggle out of the boxers but went back for more, breathless and pink-cheeked. Andrew moaned, shuffling forward to straddle Stephen’s lap.

Steven nosed under Andrew’s jaw, licked a patch of skin and bit down, and down, until Andrew dug his nails into Stephen’s back. His thigh was wet where it rubbed against Andrew’s cunt. Unprompted, he reached down to stroke Andrew’s cock, even as he licked another spot on Andrew’s throat and sank his teeth into it, leaving another mark on Andrew’s skin.

Andrew tipped his head back, and let himself be consumed.

***

“It’s just the right thing to do, c’mon,” Steven said, when Andrew stepped out of the shower on Sunday morning to find the bed made with fresh sheets and the floor cleared of debris. If he was a betting man, he’d bet that all the used dishware was washed too — likely as badly as the bed was made, because Steven was obliging but not entirely house-trained.

“Thank you,” he said graciously, rendering Steven visibly flustered.

Steven kept up a stream of chatter all the way through breakfast, hopping from ideas for the next season of _Worth It_ to the last Buzzfeed pick-up basketball to office gossip about impending lay-offs. Conspicuously missing were Steven leaving LA again and how much he clearly loved being in New York, and if he was dating again, and with whom. The break-up had fucked him up, and whether Steven would ever to admit it or not, no one would be surprised if he already picked out the names of the children he wanted to have with Ying. Andrew had wondered if it soured New York for Steven; it hadn’t.

Andrew kept his responses to monosyllables, and refused to look away when Steven’s eyes slid helplessly to the line of bruises that disappeared under the neckline of Andrew’s shirt. “When’s your flight to New York?” he said when Steven finally paused for a breath, distracted by a WhatsApp notification on his phone.

“Uh, Wednesday night.” Steven fiddled with his fork, which fell to his plate with a tinny clatter. “Oops, sorry. Here, I’ll wash up.”

“It’s my fucking kitchen, Steven. You’re the guest, so sit down.”

“Whoa, a little aggressive there. Stop rolling your eyes at me, is this what happens when an Andrew Illnyckyj is forced to work in an open-plan office? Does he become territorial at home?”

“Stop referring to me like I’m not here. And also, yes, so give me a goodbye kiss and get out.” There, Andrew thought, bandage ripped.

The taut awkwardness between them eased. “Okay,” Steven said, and kissed him exactly as Andrew was willing to bear, warm and chaste. His toasty-verdant scent lingered when he pulled away. “Okay, I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

Andrew didn’t listen to the thump of the front door when Steven left, because he was busy with the laundry, methodically measuring out detergent for the sheets. And the colourfast bleach he found hiding behind the dryer sheets, for good measure. He threw in his clothes from the weekend too, to not waste water. It was just as well that Steven hadn’t knotted him, if he was this discombobulated from a one-night stand. A heat-bond, no matter how temporary, was the last thing he needed now.

The dishes _were_ indeed done when he ventured back to the kitchen, and the roses moved from bedside to dining table. The petals were soft, but entirely lacking the fragrance he remembered from school trips to botanical gardens, and the stems were shorn of thorns. He vaguely remembered that roses were considered cat-safe, pending more studies on pesticide use.

Andrew considered tipping the flowers into the trash, but it felt— too telling, of intimations that weren’t real. He wasn’t in love with Steven, or even considered him his best friend. They weren’t anything like Ryan and Shane, who almost always appeared together on Buzzfeed videos and could, with a little work, finish each other’s sentences. 

It surprised Andrew still, how well Steven knew him regardless — enough to pick a knife he would’ve chosen, enough to embarrassingly wax lyrical about him to the approximately 800,000 viewers who watched them play the Sims. He liked being seen by Steven; this Andrew already acknowledged to himself. In all his entirety, as a man, an omega, and all the labels he cared to identify with. 

He just hadn’t ever thought it could, or would, lead to anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Posting this was probably a terrible idea, but here we are giving AO3's privacy lock another spin. The moment I find out someone in or connected to Buzzfeed got their hands on this thing, I'm taking it down. In the meantime, come scream with me in the comments about the em dash, because it's been a while since I had a reason to remember how to write it in HTML.


End file.
